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Membership Secretary: Sarah McDermott

Saturday, 16 April 2011

Isambard Academy plans to impact upon Tadpole Farm plans?

The provision of Secondary Education is a widely contentious issue when it comes to the proposed Tadpole Farm development.  Crest Nicholson did not provide any concrete plans for the provision of such a requirement in their recent consultation, but one of the ideas that was mooted was the construction of new school buildings on the current Isambard Campus, whilst relocating the school's sports facilities/playing fields to their 'proposed Common'.

However Isambard's proposed conversion to an academy may alter these plans:

The following passage is an extract from this Letter from Chair of Governors:

"Isambard is a school built through a PFI scheme. PFI means Private Finance Initiative, which means the school was built using funds provided by commercial organisations rather than through public funding. Without going into the complexities of this, the key result is that a commercial organisation owns the school building. The Local Authority owns the land and the school are tenants.

Currently the Local Authority has a legal relationship with the commercial organisation that owns the building so that if they fail to provide contracted services, or fail to maintain the building, the Local Authority can do something about it. The school has no such agreement; we have no power to ensure the building and associated services are run in the best way for the students and staff. Becoming an academy will change this. The land will be placed in trust, the building will still be
owned by a third party but the school will have the legal capability to negotiate with that company to ensure the school building is of the highest standard."

So, if the land that the school occupies will no longer be in the hands of the Local Authority, how would this impact Crest Nicholson suggestions?  What would be the terms of the 'trust' the land is placed in, and how can Crest Nicholson be confident that their proposals can be implemented?